BLACK SILENCE
Without looking up from the radio over which he was fussing, Doctor
Ryder spoke snappishly. His nerves were on edge.
"We ought not to have brought him."
"But he was so clever," protested Clark, "and surely if anybody ever
could interpret what that temple must hide in that queer sound, he'd be
the one. He interpreted claws on glass, you said--and----"
"Be still. Let me listen."
The doctor fidgeted, trying to tune, to amplify, to adjust knobs on the
unresponsive radio set.
"We had no intention of getting him into hot water," Clark said,
morosely. "We did want to get into that temple. The bandits were
unforeseen complications; but when the Lama came, I thought that for
Roger it would all be simple, once he got into the lamasery."
He watched a few minutes.
"Can't you raise even a whisper?"
"No! And it has been three nights. And besides we can't operate the
wireless, because you don't know code. Brown, in America, will be wild.
Our three days of uncertainty is nothing. He hasn't heard since Roger
left us, and that was a week before our last contact with him."
"Let me try. You go and turn the dynamo."
"I wish I knew more about it. I know precious little, come to find out,
whether it's burned out, or the brushes gone, or how to adjust these
things." The doctor relinquished his place, went into the tent.
At the tuning dial and control knobs, as he whirled them and almost
frantically called into the telephone transmitter, Clark worked.
In the tent his companion swung the flywheel over, and around, and then
stopped, groaning.
"Guess we are licked," he came out.
"You go back. We'll keep trying."
Doctor Ryder nodded.
Ten minutes of silence.
"I'm--sh-h-h!"
Clark tuned delicately, getting the "hang" of the controls.
Out of the receiving diaphragm issued a low, male voice.
"You will return to your America."
Desperately Clark swung the switch to the sending side.
"Who are you? Where is our boy? Roger? Is he there? Is he----"
"He is gone. The Voice of Doom spoke his sentence. He has learned the
secret of the hidden darkness."
"We'll have a hundred thousand American troops in your darn country if
that boy has been hurt----"
The other end of the transmission mocked with a hoarse laugh.
That was all.
Doctor Ryder, informed, looked defeated.
"And all for a tawdry jewel. And we still have----"
Clark motioned for silence, trying desperately, vainly, to raise a
response from the dead ether waves.
They retired, at last, because with the glowering clouds hanging low in
a star-obscured sky, with possible guards in sight, they dared not make
a move.
Discussion had been fruitless. They had drawn only blanks in their
search for a course of action.
Clark, lying on his cot, tossing, got up.
"I can't sleep. I'm going to walk around--see if I can think up some way
to find out about Roger--and that man with him, too, of course, because
what happens to one will happen to the other."
He went out into the somber blackness of midnight.
Walking did not keep him from brooding, nor help his brain to do its
task.
He sat on a large tussock of dry turf.
"For a tawdry gem!" he muttered.
A slight sound made him leap up, revolver drawn.
Had it been the ever-blowing gale, stirring something? Or some fresh
menace, some creeping creature, some vindictive priest, who had made
that tiny sound of a scraping shoe?
"Who's there? Speak or I'll fire!"
He knew no direction to shoot in. But the light might disclose
something. He raised the weapon.
"Mr. Clark, don't----"
"_Roger!_"
"In person, and not a ghost."
In a heavy sheeps-wool coat, shaggy and rough, the figure came to his
side. His grip of the young hand was sincerely strong.
"Quick!" Roger gasped, "give me the Eye of Om--I can exchange it and get
back and we can go before they discover me."
"Where have you been?" as they walked fast toward camp. "What happened?"
"They tried us, and the Voice of Doom sentenced us, and they put us in
the chamber behind the image. But we can't stop to talk."
"Are you all right? Is Potts safe?"
"Yes. Yes. Hurry!"
"Let me go with you."
"Only hurry, and bring the Eye."
Dashing into the tent, scattering explanations to befuddled Doctor Ryder
as he broke apart the small secret compartment in a bedroll and got the
gem, Clark met Roger and handed him the stone.
Instantly Roger fled into the darkness.
When Clark overtook him he saw Potts holding two ponies. Sending Tip to
camp, the pair mounted and galloped away.
"It was easy to find the secret," Roger said as they made a quick ride
toward the distant cliffs, "Tip helped me keep my head. We figured out
that somebody worked the Voice, and it was louder than human sound. We
were in a tunnel. It sloped downwards. It seemed as though the Buddha
image had howled. That meant a way to get into the image or open a port
from the tunnel to it. Phonograph records wouldn't have been their way.
"The wind always howled around the lamasery, up so high. From what we
knew about acoustics and how they shaped the old phonograph horns to
increase sound amplification, we worked it out that we were in a sort of
wind-tunnel or horn, and it didn't seem that they opened any rock at the
image or we would have heard it. If the far end of the tunnel opened,
and wind howled in and through the hollow image, it could make those
weird howls, high and low, moans and screeches. So we followed the
tunnel down, and by using Tip's pencil flashlight we located a lever,
and risked making the sound. But we got out."
By reversing the method, he and Mr. Clark also got in, and with the
older traveler's wisdom they found the trick of getting into the image,
and saw that when the way was closed, the tunnel did not make it howl.
Also, from the eye-places, they made sure the temple was deserted, and
soon enough the change of gems was complete and later, blocking the
lower door lever with a wedge of stone, they prevented pursuit from that
direction and eventually reached camp safely. On the way Mr. Clark
discarded his now useless Eye taken from the prongs, and Roger, at last
safe, with a plane radioed for, slept and dreamed that he was being
awarded a medal "for 'sound' wisdom."
"After all," he said in his dream, "my deduction was 'sound'."